Dae Jang-geum is Watching: Episode 10 Recap

Our characters are busy and occupied with their own schedules during the day so it’s only during the night when they can come together and spend time with one another. However, it’s also during the night when the most interesting and fascinating events occur and all our characters experience them firsthand in this episode.

Seung-ah prepares for her movie date with San-hae, but the two are called to the office by Manager Lee to work on a new project together. There, Won Bin is also present at the office to help out with the project. After assigning all three some work and deadlines, Manager Lee sits at her desk and dozes off for a few hours. San-hae eventually finishes with his part of the project and volunteers to assist Seung-ah with hers, but Manager Lee and Won Bin devise a plan to prevent him from doing so. Won Bin stays behind to help Seung-ah while Manager Lee leaves the office with San-hae. It seems like they won’t be able to go on their movie date 😦

Seung-ah ends up leaving work at 10:30PM which is already too late for a movie date. As Seung-ah and San-hae wait for the other’s text, San-hae enters the bathroom which he finds is unlocked. It turns out their bathroom lock is broken. However, their bathroom lock isn’t the only one that is unlocked as Seung-ah’s house isn’t locked either. While talking on the phone with San-hae to rearrange another movie date, Seung-ah finds a burglar rush out of her apartment just as she arrives. San-hae comes to Seung-ah’s rescue and contacts the police.

Seung-ah eventually learns that all her lingerie had been stolen from the thief. The police adds that there’s been a burglar roaming around the neighborhood also stealing lingerie from other single women and often returns to the same house he had stolen from. Therefore, Seung-ah has no choice but to stay away from her apartment until the burglar is caught. Thankfully, San-hae offers his place for Seung-ah so she happily accepts.

When she arrives, Jin-mi and Jung-sik greet her at the entrance. Jung-sik in particular changes out of his pajamas and into some nice clothes, and even cleans Jin-mi’s room just for Seung-ah. As he does some last minute cleaning, Jin-mi notes to San-hae how fascinating it is to watch Jung-sik impress his crush. When Jung-sik finally finishes with the accommodations, Seung-ah heads to sleep with Jin-mi.

However, Seung-ah struggles to fall asleep that night thanks to Jin-mi’s loud snoring. She decides to take a shower since she assumes that everyone must be asleep already. While in the restroom, Seung-ah receives a surprise visit from San-hae who enters the restroom without knowing that Seung-ah was inside. Since the bathroom lock is broken, he was able to get inside. It gets awkward between the two, but Seung-ah and San-hae eventually separate to head back to sleep. They make plans to leave for work together the next morning.

When the next day arrives, Jung-sik cooks breakfast for both his siblings and Seung-ah. However, he has two separate tables of dishes for them with Seung-ah receiving the better cooked food. Jin-mi grows jealous and envious and gets a taste of the food herself once Seung-ah leaves with San-hae for work. Haha. All that sibling love!

Seung-ah and San-hae arrive to work together and come across Won Bin in the parking lot structure. Won Bin grows suspicious seeing the two arrive for work together, but San-hae simply reasons that him and Seung-ah are just neighbors. As they all make their way to the office, Won Bin and Manager Lee assume San-hae and Seung-ah are dating and grow dejected at the assumption. However, the two neighbors aren’t actually dating (yet) and Manager Lee and Won Bin have just misunderstood.

Min-hyuk and his friend Shownu wait for Jin-mi to join them at Subway (NOOOO, NOT THE SUBWAY PPL! Haha) so they can all hang out together. Shownu is still clearly interested in Jin-mi and wants to befriend her. When Jin-mi does arrive, Min-hyuk grows uncomfortable watching Shownu attempt to be friends with Jin-mi. To distract the two, he buys them all some sandwiches. However, that isn’t enough and Shownu gestures for Min-hyuk to leave so that he can have some alone time with Jin-mi. Though Min-hyuk does leave, he eventually returns to the Subway to stay with them. He wants Jin-mi all for himself. Hehe.

Manager Lee and Won Bin comfort each other over the end of their unrequited love for Seung-ah and San-hae. The two are uncertain as to how to feel or what to do now that they assume Seung-ah and San-hae are a couple. They share their sorrows and sadness over some drinks. Meanwhile, Seung-ah stays for another night at the siblings house. However, it’s not long until Jin-mi leaves to meet up with Shownu. Jung-sik, Seung-ah, and San-hae stay behind at the house and entertain themselves with the family photo album. Seung-ah and Jung-sik can’t help, but point out San-hae’s “old” age and the generation gap between them. Jung-sik teases San-hae for being much older than him and Seung-ah. Lol.

While dancing in the practice room, Min-hyuk worries about Shownu’s feelings for Jin-mi. As if that wasn’t bad enough, he receives texts from Shownu updating him on his plans to confess to Jin-mi. Min-hyuk recalls all the memories and interactions he’s had with Jin-mi since they first met and grows irritated. He immediately gets up to meet with Shownu in an attempt to stop him.

Jin-mi arrives at the convenience store and reunites with Shownu. She even makes him some food using the ingredients from the convenience store just like how she did in the past with Min-hyuk. However, all Shownu does is take a photo of the food to send to Min-hyuk before leaving Jin-mi. The person who deserves to eat this food should be arriving at the store soon. Jin-mi is confused with Shownu’s sudden exit from the store, but she’s soon joined by a sweaty and panicked Min-hyuk. When Min-hyuk arrives at the store, he confesses his feelings for Jin-mi. In response to the unexpected confession, Jin-mi’s heartbeat starts to fasten and her nose begins to bleed. Ahhh!

Looking at a photo of San-hae eating some pork rinds causes Seung-ah to crave some. Master chef Jung-sik volunteers to cook her the late night dish so they all gather in the kitchen to cook. While Seung-ah works with Jung-sik in preparing and cooking the dish, San-hae concentrates on cooking some skewers. However, he can’t help but watch Jung-sik and Seung-ah interact adorably and lovingly with each other and grows a little jealous. Eventually, the trio finishes cooking and they feed themselves with their late night snacks. When it’s time to sleep, San-hae gives up his room for Seung-ah to sleep in.

San-hae is advised by Jung-sik to head to sleep first as he has something he needs to take care of first. San-hae watches as Jung-sik leaves the house with two frying pans. Seung-ah herself is unable to fall asleep in San-hae’s nice and clean bedroom. Thankfully, she receives a text that the thief who has stolen her belongings has been caught. She makes the final decision to leave the house so that she can catch up on some sleep in her own bedroom. When Seung-ah arrives at her apartment building, she encounters Jung-sik sitting outside the building and dozing off. When Seung-ah wakes him up, he admits that he stayed outside so that he could possibly catch the burglar himself. He wanted to protect Seung-ah.

Seung-ah scolds Jung-sik for risking his life to catch the thief as it was dangerous and could have lead to something bad. However, Jung-sik reasons that he only did it because he likes Seung-ah and ends up confessing to her. After asking Seung-ah to consider his feelings for her at least. Jung-sik stares into Seung-ah’s eyes in silence. Seung-ah is unsure as to how to react or respond.

The ending poem for the episode recites:

In the alley of the moonlit night, I sit alone in the front of the house. Carrying a fry pan at my side, I agonize deeply in distress. But the face of yours makes me break into a smile.

My Thoughts:

It’s been a while since I’ve watched this drama so I was reminded of how funny, charming, and cute this drama is with this episode. Though I’ve voiced my complaints about the love triangle in this drama, I enjoyed watching the hilarious antics in this episode between the two brothers in winning Seung-ah over. Whether it was things like the late night cooking or the small fight over pouring Seung-ah some soju into her shot glass, it was funny to see San-hae and Jung-sik subtly make their moves on Seung-ah.

It’s even cuter that Seung-ah remains oblivious to it all. She kind of has her own speculations that San-hae has feelings for her, but she probably wasn’t aware that Jung-sik liked her as well (or at least I think she doesn’t. She might also just be pretending to not know). I’m glad that Jung-sik confessed at the end of this episode so that we can now move on to seeing who Seung-ah chooses and how she will respond to Jung-sik’s confession. She clearly has feelings for San-hae and assumes San-hae has feelings for her too, she’s probably going to feel a lot of guilt that Jung-sik has feelings for her. I think it’s important to note that Seung-ah’s interactions with Jung-sik in the past were genuine and that she never intended to purposely make Jung-sik fall in love with her. In between all their hand-holding and the livestream watching and the adorable conversations that took place between Jung-sik and Seung-ah, Jung-sik fell in love with Seung-ah while Seung-ah gushed over his brother.

I kind of want the love triangle to hurry up and be over with so that we can hopefully get more scenes between San-hae and Seung-ah who I’m assuming is the main couple of this drama. We have been receiving plenty of interactions of the two throughout the drama, but with the love triangle playing a much bigger role the last few episodes, we haven’t been getting much of just Seung-ah and San-hae. I want to witness the two accidentally kiss each other again or go out for lunch again like how they did in the past. As much as I love and support Seung-ah and San-hae, it also makes me sad just thinking about Jung-sik who will probably get rejected by Seung-ah. It might even be worse knowing that he lost his crush to his brother. That’s primarily why I didn’t like this whole love triangle sub-plot in the first place because of how icky and iffy it was, but there wasn’t anything we could do with how confident the drama was pushing it onto us viewers. I’ll admit that sometimes watching Jung-sik and Seung-ah interact with each other makes me think for a split second that they’re a much better match for each other, but then I think about how tsundere San-hae is and all the other times he’s been there for Seung-ah as well and I change my mind. Lol.

I was not expecting Min-hyuk and Jin-mi’s relationship to make me a little emotional but it definitely did in this episode which was a little surprising. The scene where Min-hyuk thought about all the moments he shared with Jin-mi from the very first time they met to when they would eat her recipes at the store to when he filmed the commercial with her touched me. I didn’t even realize it myself until this episode, but the two really did spend a lot of time with each other since their first encounter. If you think about it, they’ve been there for each other at their lowest and most vulnerable moments. Jin-mi was going through difficult times working part-time at a convenience store after her plans of becoming an idol failed. Min-hyuk was still a trainee despite having been in the company for many years and not knowing if he was going to debut. The two met each other at the perfect moment and were able to overcome their challenges with each other. They supported one another and lifted the other up with encouraging words, good recipes, and lots of fun. Maybe it was because of this that I got emotional watching Min-hyuk fight for his chance to be with Jin-mi which he rightfully deserved. He couldn’t stand to lose Jin-mi to his friend who barely even knew Jin-mi and didn’t even spend as much time with her as he did. Jin-mi and Min-hyuk are a couple with much more history, sincerity, and moments than I had originally realized and now I support them a lot more.

It was adorable and entertaining watching Seung-ah be under the same roof as the two brothers which proves once again why this drama is so charming. The show always brings something different and refreshing to the table each episode and remains creative, fun, and entertaining. Now I’m curious as to what the drama is going to employ to wrap up the love triangle and the drama altogether.